[sir-alien]

Although some engineers may disagree, this is one of the reasons I believe engineering should NOT be a protected industry/profession. Fine if the title was but not the action of doing it.

I read a story about someone showing flaws in a USA traffic light system and he was subsequently fined for "illegal engineering" which is the most idiotic thing ever.

Going on current USA progression it won't be long before you get 10 years behind bars for "illegal engineering" in some states.

Wasn't even that long ago. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/29/engineer_fined_for_...

[moftz]

That case is a little out there, I've never met an non-pe engineer that has ever gotten in trouble for doing engineering. I think PE certifications are fine in cases where there is one guy having the final say on a massive project that could kill someone if it fails. If my calculator app crashes, no one is going to be crushed to death. I think software and electrical engineering is a little bit different compared to a mechanical or civil engineer that is designing buildings and superstructures. For one, software and hardware is something you can constantly test and redesign for relatively little cost. You can come out with a product that just works and works well. Even if you are producing software and hardware that goes into lifesaving equipment, you can still perform tests on the final product to make sure it conforms. Once you build that bridge, its up there. You can't refactor it and come out with a new version if a strut fails. And because your design is in the public, the county/state/country is going to make sure you do it right. Too many people have been hurt by shoddy buildings in the lifetime of humanity to ignore modern safety code. There should be no reason why having a licensed professional engineer is a bad thing for anyone except those not good enough to beat the exam or those too cheap to hire one.

I really don't see anything to suggests that "illegal engineering" is a trend. I don't think that discussing engineering topics should be illegal but you should be fined for lying about being a PE just as you would by saying you are a medical doctor when you really aren't.

[geebee]

I believe that the PE in Industrial engineering works that way (ie., as a professional title designation). I don't think there's anything you can do with a PE in Industrial Engineering that you wouldn't be allowed to do as an "Operations Research Analyst". I read this a while back and tried to search around for it and wasn't successful, so sorry, I'm saying this with no cite (and not a lot of certainty). I suppose software engineering could work the same, but I seriously doubt anyone of the 200K+ salaried software engineers at top tech companies would bother getting it if it were just a title designation. Nor do the better paid supply chain analysts and other types who are essentially doing IE seem to bother with the PE designation.

The problem here is that we have sound engineers and special effects engineers, and I truly don't think there's a huge problem with the dilution of the term.

I personally don't like the term software engineering much, mainly because I think it's better to acknowledge that something very new has emerged, and that it really isn't a branch of engineering. I think that it shares a set of great grand parents with many engineering disciplines and a few other fields (the math department), but I think software is about as closely related to engineering as actuarial science or statistics, or maybe even quantitative economics. We have our own thing here. If we want to make it more rigorously licensed, ok, that's not a bad discussion to have, but I'd personally rather see it kept well away from engineering. I'm suspicious of degree requirements, but if we had one, a degree in math might even make more sense than than engineering.

I see a lot of this as an engineering land grab. There's all this talk about how software "engineering" is diluting the term engineering, and yeah, when you can read a book on PHP and MySql (or just the first few pages) and call yourself an engineer, that tends to happen.

But come on now, folks, let's not be excessively modest here. Incredible things are happening in software. PageRank is a work of math, not a work of engineering.

Before it strikes you as excessively paranoid, keep in mind that the patent bar specifically excludes mathematics as coursework that qualifies you to become a patent agent or lawyer. This surprises a lot of people, but yeah, someone with a degree in civil engineering can qualify to evaluate whether a new development infringes on page rank, where as someone with a BA, MA, and PhD in math? Nope, math isn't relevant to the patent bar.

The low, low quality of patent review in this field is pretty evident, and we actually go out of our way to specifically exclude people who probably have the strongest background.

Trust me, engineers will totally screw up software if they get control of licensing, and I assure you, they will absolutely exclude people with math degrees from licensing. Look, if they want to do that with structural engineering, go ahead, but they need to keep their mitts off software.